Facebook Amps up the Effort to Combat Fake News and Moderate Content

The world’s
largest social network has a long list of challenges that need to be
addressed. Starting from the election meddling and spreading fake
news to the allegation of misuse of data and censorship. Right now
the tech giant is under lots of pressure to takes counter steps to
stop these.

Now the
company has announced details about an independent board that they
are forming that has the power to reverse the company’s own decisions
about what content it displays up or removes down. The company is
seeking feedback from various resources like researchers, think
tanks, and other groups as to how the board could be constructed.
Facebook expects the ideas to be related to how the board should
work, what types of concerns it might hear and how it can handle all
cultural differences. The board is expected to comprise 40 members,
and each member would work for three years, though the final decision
can change based on the actual needs of the company.

Facebook has
also mentioned how it is taking steps to stop the spread of
misinformation and election meddling ahead of the European Parliament
election in May. The measures include the rollout of a tool that is
capable of tracking political ads globally, and the establishment of
“regional operations centers” in Facebook’s Dublin and
Singapore offices to stop hate speech, fake news, and suppression of
voters before elections.

This move is
seen as Facebook attempts to rebuild user faith after a sequence of
many scandals, including the Cambridge Analytica, a UK political
consultancy that harvested data on almost 87 million users without
their knowledge.

From a
recent event that took place in Brussel, the Facebook’s head of
global affairs and communications, Nick Clegg, said: “On
elections, I’m in no doubt that we have a lot of work to do to
demonstrate that Facebook tools can provide a positive contribution
to the quality of our democracy.” He also added that “much
of the skepticism that Facebook faces as a company and as an industry
is about something more fundamental: the role of personal data in the
internet economy.”

Facebook has
also promised that it is going to release a political ads database in
India, Europe, Israel, and Ukraine ahead of elections in these
countries respectively before expanding the tool worldwide. Facebook
is extending the rule of “verifying identity and location of ad
companies” to other countries. IT is imposed that ads must
incorporate a “paid for by” disclaimer, and these data are
stored in a public database for up to seven years.

When this
rule was the first cast in the U.S.A., many glitches occurred in the
political ads database. Some users raised their worry stating that
their ads were being mischaracterized as political, on the other
hand, few news outlets found loopholes in the system which allowed
them to get approval for fake political ads. Though there is still a
long and treacherous way to go for the company to completely stop the
problem of spreading fake political news, it is good to know that
efforts are going on to make things happen.

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